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Ruth Gilbert
Florence Ruth Gilbert ONZM (26 March 1917 - 11 April 2016), also known as Mrs. John Mackay, was a New Zealand poet whose work has been widely published in New Zealand and Commonwealth countries. Life Family Gilbert comes from the same family as librettist W.S. Gilbert (the surname was originally French).Wright, Niel. Ruth Gilbert An Account of her Poetry 1919-85 p.25. Her father, Henry George Gilbert, was born in 1881 in Cust, Canterbury, New Zealand, into a farming family. In his youth, having left primary school and home, he worked his way around the world, visiting relatives in Hampshire, England. He enlisted in the Mounted Rifles in the Boer War at 19, giving a false age. He was educated as a late entrant at Otago University, completing the work for an M.A. about 1914, but was never awarded the degree as he had not matriculated. Responding to an invitation to train as a Presbyterian minister] (although an Anglican by upbringing) he spent 4 years at Knox College, Otago. He was the top student in his years in Hebrew and Greek. He married in 1914, and in 1917 went to France as a padre with the artillery with the rank of Captain Captain. He was tinister of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Hamilton, New Zealand, 1925-1946.The Centennial book A Century of Faith (1976), published in April 1985, has passages on the Rev. Gilbert and his wife, pp.14, 19 Dewey 283.9359 21 After retiring in 1946, he lived in Hamilton, dying in 1954.Wright, Niel. Ruth Gilbert: An Account of Her Poetry He played the violin and the cello and was a luthier (violin maker).New Zealand Listener 10 February 1967 p.26 Gilbert's mother, Florence Margaret (Carrington), was born in 1886 in Dunedin. Her father was an artist, G.W. Carrington; her mother was Irish. A gifted musician, Carrington became a music teacher, and was official accompanist for visiting artists in Dunedin]. She played the piano, pipe organ, and cello. Marrying in 1914, she had 4 children, of whom Ruth was the 2nd. Youth and education Ruth Gilbert was born at Greytown in the Wairarapa, during her mother's visit to the Featherston Military Camp where Captain Gilbert was training. She lived until 8 years old in Invercargill, and thereafter in Hamilton city overlooking the river from 1925 till 1935. Interviewed in 1991, Gilbert said that as a child of the manse her earliest influences came from hymns and the Bible.MacKay, Deirdre. “Escaping into poetry gave her life vitality”, Nelson Evening Mail. Reproduced in Wright, Niel. Sketch Profile of Ruth Gilbert pp.49-51. “My father recited poems to all the family – and listening to him read from the Bible Sunday after Sunday gave me an ear for words and their music.” Her first attempts at rhyme were a source of merriment to her family. One of her earliest memories is being laughed at by a family group on the veranda of her grandparents’ place for parodying a hymn which goes: ::The great physician now is near ::The sympathising Jesus… Her own version in tune with the original went: ::Oh little fly oh don’t you die ::I’ll ask the Lord to help you. She has an equally clear recollection of the earliest original poem she wrote, when she was 11. It read: ::A mass of brightest gold was she ::And not as any other tree ::For she was golden as the sun ::That through the branches played and run. “I knew the last line was wrong but didn’t know what to do about it.” Many years later the poem reappeared, much altered as “The Wattle Tree” and started with the lines: ::You blazing there, a living core of light, ::Were the first poem a child longed to write. ::A spendthrift gold among the careful green… At 12 she started to read other people’s poetry, an interest that was encouraged by the wealth of reading material at the manse. “My father had a study which had books from floor to ceiling and, provided I had clean hands, I was allowed to read what I liked.” An early favourite was Thomas Wyatt and later she enjoyed Yeats, Graves and many of the French poets. “The music and artistry of their work stayed with me for the rest of my life.” She was educated at Hamilton West Primary School and at Hamilton Girls' High School. Gilbert’s earliest verse was written about 1926, and originally published in the Hamilton High School magazine in the 1930s, but copies have yet to be found. In 1935 she trained at what is now the Dunedin School of Physiotherapy, completing her diploma in 1938. Career From 1938 to 1946, Gilbert was employed in the Waikato Hospital, Wellington Hospital (Otaki Branch, where she was in charge of the Physiotherapy Department), and Christchurch Hospital. Most of her experience was with young orthopedic and geriatric patients.Wright, Niel. Ruth Gilbert: An Account of Her Poetry She returned home for 4 years to nurse her mother, who died of cancer in 1943.Wright, Niel. Ruth Gilbert: An Account of Her Poetry A 1966 interview report Hard Lines for Women Writers states: "Ruth Gilbert, who wrote verse from about nine, kept black books with “the most ghastly verse” and contributed to her high school magazine, was in her early 20s when a friend suggested she should show her verse to C.A. Marris."Wright, Niel. Sketch Profile of Ruth Gilbert pp.18-19, in the newspaper interview “Hard Lines for Women Writers.” Marris, then writing in the Evening Post as Percy Flage, told her: “You can write, but you mustn’t send anything out till I tell you.” He got her work into the Evening Post, over the initial “R”, and later into Art in New Zealand and New Zealand Best Poems. “Mr Marris has been much criticised,” Ruth Gilbert said. “But I feel he was genuinely interested in New Zealand literature and was only trying to get writers published.” Gilbert’s earliest commercial publications were in 1941 in the Evening Post and in Art in New Zealand. “Joseph” appears in Lyric Poems of New Zealand 1928-1942, edited by C. A. Marris. F.W. Nielson Wright traces to the Evening Post 1941-1944 the 4 poems in More Early Poems, 1939-1944 sourced to the Evening Post as well as 3 others: “Joseph”, “Worshipper” and “Street at Dusk” that appear in Lazarus and other poems, and one never reprinted by Ruth Gilbert,the poem “Aged Eighty-Three”.Wright, Niel.Apology for Man 2010 For 7 years, she was engaged to Rev. John Dinsmore Johnston (born 19 November 1912).http://www.archives.presbyterian.org.nz stated that Dinsmore “has previously been engaged to Ruth Gilbert, daughter of Rev. H.G. Gilbert.” Johnston was Irish, and Ruth Gilbert’s poem “Leprechaun,” written 1939 in Irish dialect, may relate to him. Johnston studied at Knox College, 1937-1938, when presumably he and Gilbert met. Johnston left New Zealand to serve as a missionary in China, arrving there on 13 March 1941. He was interned during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong from December 1941 to September 1945. He returned to New Zealand on 24 October 1945. On VJ Day, the day the Pacific war ended, when “All the bells were ringing,”Wright, Niel. Sketch Profile of Ruth Gilbert, 2007. pp. 19, 92. Ruth Gilbert married John Bennett Mackay, a physician specialising in chest diseases.. Wright, Niel. Ruth Gilbert: An Account of Her Poetry Their children were Michael (born 1946), Deirdre (1951), Charles (1954), and Pippa (1957). Ruth travelled for a year with her family to England and France in 1953, when John received his MRCP degree. His FRCP was conferred by the College later. She and John made 4 trips to Samoa on professional business. In 1975-1977 she made a trip on her own to New York to visit her son Michael who was working as a physician there.Wright, Niel. Ruth Gilbert: An Account of her Poetry pp. 2-3. Gilbert had poems published in the following: * Art in New Zealand December 1941 * Yearbook of the Arts in New Zealand 1948, 1949 * Arts Year Book 1950, 1951 * New Zealand Best Poems 1942, 1943 * New Zealand Poetry Yearbook 1951, 1955, 1957-8 * Poetry New Zealand Vol. 1 1971, Vol. 4 1979 * The New Zealand Listener from July 1950, 1951 (twice), 1952, 1957, 1958 (twice), 1960, 1961 (twice), 1962 (4 times), 1963 (3, possibly 5, times), 1964 (twice), 1965, 1966 (possibly twice), 1967, 1968 (twice), 1969 (twice), 1972, 1973, 1975, 1990.Exact dates are given in Sketch Profile of Ruth Gilbert. Selected Poems, 1941-1998 was compiled in 1998 by Gilbert, at the age of 80, with the cooperation of an editor, Derek Bolt. It is significant in that it presents the early poems and the Sappho poems as part and parcel of her work. Besides her family, many people have been supportive and helpful in furthering Gilbert’s work. Worthy of naming are C.A. Marris, Pat Lawlor, Charles Brasch, Mervyn Taylor, A.R.D. Fairburn, J.H.E. Schroder, Jonathan Bennett, Robert Chapman, Celia and Louis Johnson, Willow Macky, Lorna and Monte Holcroft, Ian Gordon, Joan Stevens (an acquantance from school days at Hamilton), Margaret J. O’Donnell (Britain), Niel Wright, Sylvia Ashton-Warner, Jean and James Munro Bertram, Frank McKay, Helen Shaw, Denis Glover, Lauris Edmond, Ralph Park, Riemke Ensing, Meg and Alistair Campbell, Sam Hunt, Jack Ross, Jan Kemp, Peter Smart, Robin Dudding, Bill Wieben, Ian Wedde, Harvey McQueen, Derek Bolt, C.K. Stead, Michele Leggott, Jenny Bornholdt, Terry Locke, Mary Barnard (Oregon), Dr. Michael O'Leary, Mark Pirie, Denis Welsh, Cameron La Follette (Oregon), Ian Lancashire (Toronto), her commercial publishers A.H. & A.W. Reed and Allen & Unwin, and her many readers.This is a documented list of names of her editors, reviewers, publishers, or friends named in her interviews or published letters. Many have entries in the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature 1998. Writing Gilbert is a poet, and her public oeuvre is almost totally poetry. Her published poetry dates from 1938 to 2005. Some uncollected poetry was published when she was a schoolgirl, but the publications have not been retrieved. Other uncollected jeux d’esprit exist in letters held at the Alexander Turnbull Library and in private hands.Bibliographical records at National Library of New Zealand. Her total poetry is not voluminous: not including the selected and collected editions or Talismans, 390 pages in total.Bibliographical records at National Library of New Zealand. Of those works a significant number are stand-alone poems, but from 1947 Gilbert was given to writing poem sequences, which often appeared as stand-alone pieces in full or in part in magazines. Themes and critical recognition From 1941 to 1966, Gilbert’s reputation was prestigious. After 1966 her opportunities to publish in established outlets shrank. Her efforts to find commercial publishers for collections to be called The Lovely Acres, The Tenth Muse and Selected and Collected Poems were unsuccessful, and from 1984 she relied on small publishers. Ruth Gilbert always shows as a traditionalist poet who moves freely and comfortably within formalism, notably lyrical and melodious, usually dramatic and narrative, rarely explicitly confessional. In her brief autobiographical comments, Ruth Gilbert makes it clear that from earliest childhood she was aware of religion and nature, and religious material and the natural world are a staple throughout her poetry, so overwhelmingly that people may read and see her as a devout Christian. But she herself says a very early poem of hers parodies a Christian hymn in commenting on the natural world. All her use of religious material moves in the same direction, even for some readers to the point of comic parody. A comic poem called “Aged Eighty Four”, published in 1944, was inspired by the experience of nursing her mother while she was dying of cancer. It is consistent with her refusal to express grief as a reaction to the natural world. She knows the reality of human life as thoroughly as anybody, but she holds and expresses confidently that the natural world is a positive good. Critical reputation Up to 1966, reviews of her poetry were probably more numerous in the provincial presses of New Zealand and Britain than have so far come to light. But since 1966 balanced, appreciative and authoritative reviews and interviews have appeared by James Bertram, Heather McPherson, Lauris Edmond, Derek Bolt, Deirdre Mackay and others.Collected in Wright, F.W. Nielsen. Sketch Profile of Ruth Gilbert and How about Honouring the New Zealand Poet Ruth Gilbert on her 85th Birthday. In her 1970 study of contemporary poets, professor Joan Stevens places Gilbert in the Georgian tradition. :Ruth Gilbert’s talent is for the straightforward evocation of brief moments of emotion, particularly those of the child or the woman, within the tradition of the romantic lyric. For her, the poetry seems to lie more in the words themselves than in the experiences; she is willing to take over poetic resonances established by others, rebuilding them for her own purposes: ::How steeped in beauty these old names are; ::Saffron, Sandalwood, Cinnabar… :This is a Georgian attitude, resulting in low-pressure poems of simple statement. If she has a poetic ancestor, it is Walter de la mare, who is close at hand in “Phobia”. “Legendary Lady” and “Portrait.” : :Some of these moments of emotion are as imagined in the lives of others, particularly within Bible stories, where such figures as Joseph, Rachel and Lazarus are sympathetically probed. Some are personal to the poet, as “Sanatorium” and, nearer to the bone, “Fall Out”. Some are crystallised into small perfection, as in “Li Po”, "Metamorphosis” and “The Trees of Corot.” : :Ruth Gilbert has made several attempts to increase her scale, by binding lyrics into a sequence. Of these the most successful is "The Luthier", which, even if conventionally romantic in essence, has the merit of a more vigorous vocabulary, and more complex rhythms than she has commanded elsewhere. : :At her best, she can set up quiet ripples – never disturbing ones – which take her meaning beyond the sensitive but unadventurous moment which she describes. Her later work, however, suggests a growing awareness of the forces to be tapped when the form has been hammered out by the pressure of the content and is not a mere relaxed handling of old words and shapes. There may therefore be different work ahead of her. But her natural place is with the Georgians.Joan Stevens. Contemporary Poets of the English Language, 1970 Chicago. London 1971. New York Niel Wright has also written on Ruth Gilbert’s Georgianism.Wright, F. W. Nielsen. Celebrating Ruth Gilbert and the Triumph of Kiwi Georgianism: An Essay in the Literary History of Aoteaoa 2002. Wright, F. W. Nielsen. Survey of Critical Documents on Kiwi Georgianism. 2010 Ruth Gilbert’s “Lazarus” sequence was singled out for praise in a 1990 entry on her work. "The poems are quiet, lyric, occasional, sometimes slight, about music and biblical stories and places – NY, Samoa, England. But the earliest post-war poems about Lazarus are striking. In a group of moving poems about birth (‘Quickening’, ‘Justification’, ‘Still-Born': ‘O child who did not cry, you cry for ever/ Through all my nights’); about woman’s need for love, and loss of it; about woman’s silence (‘She Who is Silent’, ‘By Bread Alone’), and about facing death of a loved one: ‘Death is of the Grass’."Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy (eds). The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present 1990. Critics have remarked on her lyricism and mastery of form. ”She uses conventional, usually rhymed forms confidently and often elegantly, with an essentially lyrical talent. Some notable poems on her war experience, when she practised as a physiotherapist in the Wellington region, are included in Complete Early Poems 1938-44 (1994). Her work includes autobiographical sequences ("The Sunlit Hour", 1955, "The Luthier", 1966) and travel sequences ("Tusitala’s Island" in Collected Poems, 1984). Her references are often biblical, as in the anthologised "Leah", or classical, as in the extensive set of short poems on Sappho themes written after she learnt Greek at the age of 75 (Breathings, 1992).”Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie (eds). Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, 1998 In 1985 Niel Wright published the only book-length survey of Gilbert’s poetry in print to that date.Wright, F.W. Nielsen. Ruth Gilbert: An Account of her Poetry 1985 Subsequently he updated coverage to include the early poems published in 1988. In 2007 he published at length a resource book on Ruth Gilbert’s career.Wright, F. W. Nielsen. Sketch Profile of Ruth Gilbert 2007. He has also written a book-length discussion of the cultural milieu of the leading literary editors 1922-1949 Marris and Schroder and their favourite poets Ruth Gilbert, Eileen Duggan and Robin Hyde.Wright, F. W. Nielsen. Theories of Style in the Schroder-Marris School of Poets in Aotearoa, being 'Salt and Snow' Part 2 2001 Recognition Gilbert is a 3-time winner of the Jessie Mackay Memorial Award for verse.Biography, Gilbert, Ruth Gilbert (1917-), Representative Poetry Online, University of Toronto, UToronto.ca, Web, Nov. 24, 2011. In 2002 she was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to poetry.The Queen's Birthday and Golden Jubilee Honours List 2002, Honours Lists, Honours Office, Cabinet Office, Government of New Zealand, June 3, 2002. Web, Jan. 17, 2004. Publications Poetry *''Lazarus, and other poems'' (illustrated by E. Mervin Taylor). Wellington: A.H. & H.W. Reed, 1949. *''The Luthier: Poems.'' Wellington: A.H. & H.W. Reed, 1966. *''The Sunlit Hour.'' London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955. *''Collected Poems.'' Wellington: Black Robin, 1984. *''Early Poems, 1938-1944.'' Wellington: Cultural and Political Booklets, 1988. *''More Early Poems, 1939-1944, with five additional pieces''. Wellington: Cultural and Political Booklets, 1988. *''Breathings: Poems.'' Te Aro: Original Books, 1992. *''Dream, Black Night’s Child: Poems.'' Te Aro: Original Books, 1993. *''Complete Early Poems, 1938-1944, with six later pieces''. Te Aro: Original Books, 1994. *''Gongyla Remembers: Poems''. Te Aro: Original Books, 1994. *''Complete Sappho Poems of Ruth Gilbert''. Te Aro: Original Books, 1998. *''Selected Poems, 1941-1998'' (edited by Ruth Gilbert & Derek Bolt). Wellington: Original Books, 2008. *''The Lovely Acres, and other poems''. Wellington: Original Books, 2009. *''Talismans, and later poems''. Wellington: Original Books, 2009. Filmscript *''Mysterious Eve: A filmscript''. Wellington: Cultural & Political Booklets, 2009. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Ruth Gilbert, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Jan. 17, 2014. See also *List of New Zealand poets References F.W. Nielsen Wright]], Ruth Gilbert, an Account of her Poetry: An Interpretative Study, Wellington, Cultural and Political Booklets, 1985 Notes External links ;Poems *Gilbert, Ruth (1917-) (6 poems) at Representative Poetry Online ;Audio / video *Ruth Gilbert (b. 1917) at The Poetry Archive *Ruth Gilbert at the Aotorea New Zealand Poetry Sound Archive ;Books *Ruth Gilbert in the New Zealand Literature File ;About Category:1917 births Category:Living people Category:New Zealand poets Category:New Zealand women writers Category:Officers of the New Zealand Order of Merit Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:20th-century women writers Category:Women poets Category:Formalist poets